The Unseen (21 page)

The source of the crash is immediately apparent. Smashed shards of a china basin sit in a puddle of white mess on the floor of the corridor.

‘What has happened? That was the batter for the sausage puddings!’ exclaims Mrs Bell, who has waddled along behind her mistress. Hester glances at Robin Durrant, who looks serious for once, and then into the little room, where Albert is filling his arms with foodstuffs.

‘Albert? What on earth is going on?’ she asks him.

‘All of this stuff must be cleared out, Hetty. Robin has need of this room,’ Albert says, quite cheerfully.

‘But … this is the cold store, Mr Durrant. What possible use could it be to you?’ Hester asks.

‘Very considerable use, my dear Mrs Canning. I have decided to develop my own photographs, you see. My equipment was delivered to me this morning … The local laboratories have insufficient skill for work of such a precise nature as I am undertaking; and anyway they take far too long to return my prints to me,’ Robin says. He stands up from the wall and links his hands behind his back, making no move to assist Albert in his labours. ‘I do apologise about the batter, Mrs Bell.’ The theosophist smiles at the simmering housekeeper.

‘But … I don’t understand,’ Hester says. ‘This is where we
keep fresh food cold … what has it to do with your photographs?’ she asks.

‘Excuse me, dear,’ Albert says, squeezing past them and towards the kitchen with arms laden with bacon and cheese.

‘I need a dark room, Mrs Canning. A room where absolutely all light can be excluded, so that I may safely develop my prints. This room, with only a tiny window and such a good solid door, is perfect.’

‘It’s quite impossible, Reverend. In this weather! Nothing will last from one hour till the next, if I haven’t a cold store for it! Perhaps we might do without it in winter, or even spring … but now? No, no – it will not do …’ Mrs Bell protests.

‘Nevertheless, Mrs Bell, this is the perfect – nay, the
only
– place that will do for it. Mr Durrant’s needs are quite specific,’ says the vicar, his voice steady and his expression adamant.

‘And can he be specific about how I should manage without it?’ the housekeeper snaps, much to Robin Durrant’s apparent delight.

‘That’s enough, thank you, Mrs Bell,’ Hester says, as soothingly as she can. With a black look on her face, the housekeeper disappears into the kitchen. Hester finds her pulse racing, and an odd rushing sound fills her ears. ‘Albert,’ she says, trying to get her husband’s attention as he returns to the store and begins to pile up bowls of fruit and vegetables. ‘
Albert!
’ She lowers her voice, aiming to speak only to him. ‘There must be some other place we can install Mr Durrant’s equipment! This is hardly appropriate – for one thing, it is below stairs, and Mrs Bell is quite right to resent the intrusion into her domain. And for another, in this hot weather it is madness to lose the use of this room for food! I do wish you had consulted with me about this beforehand … I could have pointed out earlier that this is really not the answer—’

‘But it is, Hetty. Robin has searched all over the house, and this is the only place one might sensibly set up a dark room,’ Albert insists.

‘Well … what about one of the outbuildings? The old
woodshed has no windows at all – surely we could arrange some worktops of some kind in there for him?’

‘The old woodshed? It’s full of dust and spiders, Hester! Don’t be so ridiculous! How can Robin be expected to produce something as fragile and important as a photograph of an elemental when he is surrounded by crumbling plaster and sawdust? Really – you must desist with this obstruction!’

‘But … but you shouldn’t even
be
down here!’ Hester whispers, unhappily. Two firsts in the space of five minutes, she thinks – Sophie Bell laughing, and Albert below stairs, within the female realm of the kitchen and utility areas.

‘Excuse me,’ Albert says again, passing her with the load of fruit and vegetables. Hester turns to watch him go, and catches the eye of the theosophist, still dallying in the corridor. She can’t hold his gaze, and drops her eyes, filling with ill-defined outrage.

‘I
am
sorry to be such a nuisance,’ Robin says, not sounding sorry at all. Hester squeezes her teeth together and manages the briefest of smiles before walking past him after her husband. She cannot find it in her to accept his apology.

‘I’m quite sure you will manage, Mrs Bell. You are a woman of great resource,’ Albert says to the housekeeper, uncomfortably, as Hester catches up with him.

‘Just the milk, then, Reverend? It can’t hurt to let me keep the milk in there – it won’t take up much room …’

‘No, I’m afraid that’s quite out of the question. The risk of contamination is too great. There. I apologise if you are inconvenienced, Mrs Bell, but the needs of our guest must take precedence in this instance. Our work is of the utmost importance. I would be grateful if you could bring out the rest of the food, and let us hear no more about it,’ the vicar says, and walks away up the stairs.

‘Madam, can’t you talk to him? Everything will spoil!’ Sophie appeals to Hester once Albert is out of earshot.

Oddly short of breath, Hester can only shake her head helplessly. ‘I’m sorry, Sophie. Please just … do the best you can,’ she says. She glances back along the corridor but Robin Durrant has gone out into the courtyard, leaving the cold store half empty and the spilt batter on the floor, attracting flies. Seconds later, Cat appears, drying her hands on her apron with a look of outrage on her face.

‘The theosophist just sent me in to clear up his bloody mess, if you please,’ she snaps, recoiling slightly when she sees that Hester is still in the room. ‘Begging your pardon, madam,’ she mutters.

‘No, that’s quite all right, Cat. If you wouldn’t mind, please do see to it,’ Hester says meekly, and flees the anger of the two women. At the top of the stairs she pauses, suddenly quite at a loss as to where to go or what to do next. It seems as though the house has changed somehow, as though somebody has been in during her absence and shifted all the furniture slightly, so that nothing is quite in its right place.
Our work is of the utmost importance
. Albert’s words echo in her head. Is this where that important thing has been lost, then? Did it start the day Albert rushed indoors and told her he’d seen elemental beings? She’d hardly believed him serious, at the time. Feeling unsettled and almost afraid, Hester goes into the parlour and sits on the edge of a chair, quite alone.

Mrs Bell waits until Hester’s footsteps have receded, then turns to Cat with her face pinched up in anger.

‘What’s all this?’ Cat asks.

‘Well, the young guest needs a
dark room
. To make photographs in, apparently, although what pictures he can take in a room with no light, I haven’t a clue. And my cold store is to be the place! No other room in the house will do for him – it has to be this one! And all the food will have to come out of it so as he can do his thing in it, whatever it might be. We’ll have nothing by the end of the day but rancid butter and green curds!’

‘All right – calm down. He’ll be developing the pictures in the dark room, not taking them,’ Cat says.

‘Developing pictures? What do you mean?’

‘The plates are very sensitive to light until they are developed – that is how an image comes to be imprinted upon them in the first place, of course. No other light must reach them until the right chemicals can be applied to set the image – even the faintest gleam would spoil it,’ she explains.

‘How in God’s name do you know all this? No, don’t tell me. You learned it in London,’ Mrs Bell mutters.

‘That I did. The Gentleman had photography as a particular hobby of his.’

‘Of course he did. Well, perhaps with all the vast knowledge you gathered there you can think of a way to keep that milk from spoiling by lunch time?’ she asks, acidly.

Cat thinks for a while. ‘I might have the answer, you know,’ she says, lightly. ‘Does the vicar’s wife have any mackintosh squares, for sitting herself on damp ground and the like?’

‘I believe so, in one or other of the trunks. What on earth will you do with them?’

‘Let’s find them first, then I’ll show you,’ Cat says. She peers back along the corridor before she goes upstairs, and sees the outline of the theosophist, still standing out in the courtyard. She does not like to think that he will be down in the cellars from now on; that he might be around to overhear her speak, or watch her work. Without being able to say quite why, she would prefer to keep him at a greater distance – the safe privacy of the kitchens feels violated.

Cat finds what she is looking for in the chest of drawers in the hallway: two large squares of waterproof oilcloth. She fetches a ball of strong jute garden twine from the greenhouse, then she and the housekeeper pack all the meat and dairy foods into a hamper. With one of them at each handle, they go out into the back garden and make their way to the far corner of the lawn, where the ground is
shaded by a stand of ancient apple trees that have mistletoe crouching on them here and there. Protected from the worst of the sun’s onslaught, the grass here is longer and greener. It’s a cool and calming corner.

‘What are you thinking, girl?’ Mrs Bell demands, when Cat puts her side of the hamper down with a bump. Cat points to a pile of crumbling stonework, topped with a rotting wooden lid.

‘The old well,’ she says, heaving the heavy lid to one side. Mould and cobwebs fur the underside of it; the dark entrance to the shaft breathes out a damp smell like fungus. Cat brushes the cobwebs aside, calmly flicking away a spider when it clambers along her wrist.

‘Ugh
, how can you bear to!’ Mrs Bell shudders. Cat glances up at her.

‘There are far worse things in life than spiders, Sophie Bell,’ she says.

‘That’s Mrs Bell to you,’ says Mrs Bell, but she speaks distractedly, as if from habit, and there is little feeling behind the words.

‘So. We tie the stuff into bundles, good and tight, then we lower them a way down into the well, and tie them to the top somehow … to a cross bar – this’ll do,’ Cat explains, picking up a broken wooden slat from the grass and laying it across the round hole.

‘I suppose it will be cool in there. Cooler than the kitchen, at least,’ Mrs Bell concedes.

‘Very much so.’ Cat swings the lid of the hamper open, begins to unpack onto the lush grass.

‘It won’t do for the milk jugs. We’ll have to stand them in basins of cold water back indoors.’

‘And if it starts to turn by afternoon, we can scald whatever’s left. It should at least keep until the morning if we do that,’ Cat adds.

A soft breeze eases through the parchment leaves above them.
Mrs Bell stands wide, catches her breath. She eyes the mouth of the well with dark mistrust, as if almost frightened by it.

‘How did you even know this was here?’ the housekeeper asks.

‘Oh, you know. Just … getting my bearings,’ Cat says.

‘I’ll bet. Snooping about is more like it.’ Mrs Bell stands still and watches the well; she does not begin to unpack. Cat is drawing breath to demand help when Sophie Bell speaks again. ‘I shan’t be able to go too close to it, I think. No, I shan’t. Not too close, and not to look into it.’ She shudders a little, clamping her hands defensively into the enveloping flesh of her armpits.

‘Why on earth not? What’s to be scared of? There’s no way a woman of your girth could fall in there, after all,’ Cat says, still unpacking. But when she looks up, she sees that the housekeeper’s face is pale, almost yellowish white, like the butter she herself is holding. ‘Are you all right?’ she asks, more gently.

‘I lost my Walter in a well. I tend to put it out of my mind, as a person might. Something like that. But now and then, you can’t help but think of it,’ says Sophie Bell, and her voice is different, much smaller than usual; deadened and defeated.

‘Walter? I never heard you mention him before. Who’s Walter?’

‘My little boy, of course! Just five years old he was, when I lost him.’ Sophie Bell presses her lips into a tight purse that puckers her chin.

‘Down a well?’ Cat asks quietly.

‘The bigger boys dared him. Little buggers. They never meant no harm, I know, but at the time, of course, I wanted their hides. They dared him that he’d never climb down the rope far enough to touch the water. Silly boy, he went and did it – he wasn’t to know any better. Nearly made it back up, they said, but then he slipped his grip on the rope and fell back again. Hit his head on the side and that was that.’ In the quiet after Mrs Bell speaks, a robin comes to spy on them. Cat crumbles a tiny corner of the cheese and throws it into the grass for him.

‘That’s terrible, Sophie,’ she says quietly, her throat gone tight with dismay. ‘I’m so sorry to hear it.’

‘Going on twenty years ago, but I still miss him. His birthday would have been next week. He’d not have been much older than you.’

‘Were you married, then?’

‘Of course I was bloody married! We don’t all of us love scandal like you, Cat Morley. And you’ll ask me next what became of my husband. Well, he up and died of a tumour. Not two years after Walter went down the well. No great loss to me nor mankind, but he gave me my Walter, so I had him to thank for that. He was a lovely bairn, he was – so kind, and so sunny.’

‘I had no idea you’d suffered such loss,’ Cat says, softly. She wishes she could put out her hand and take Sophie’s, but the housekeeper’s arms remain tightly folded. ‘It must have been very hard for you, to go on with life after that. No wonder it soured your temper.’

‘Hearing your pert remarks all day long does nothing to ease my sourness, young lady. You’ve a bad habit for speaking whatever comes straight into your head, do you know that?’ Sophie remarks, and Cat smiles slightly.

‘Yes, I’ve been told that before. But you could have married again, and had another child, couldn’t you?’ she asks. Mrs Bell shakes her head sadly.

‘Only a lass who’s never had a babe could think one so easily replaced. It takes the heart out of you, when they go. And besides, willing men were hardly queuing around the corner for the likes of me. It was probably too late to have another by then, anyway; even if I could have found somebody I liked.’